Holy holy hell, I literally _just_ got my captital out this morning. That. was. close.
It's especially tiresome the fact that people keep pointing at these disasters claiming "crypto has failed", when reality is the exact opposite: CEXs are the exact antithesis of the core crypto idea of decentralizing trust. "Not your keys, not your coins" keeps being proven right.
Also, be mindful of what the FDIC (or its equivalent in your country) insures per bank account. It might be worth it to use multiple accounts.
Do not put money into any crypto exchange, relying on the FDIC to protect you in the event the exchange goes bust.
That list seems to include buyouts, though, i.e. cases in which the FDIC didn't actually have to directly disburse funds.
In Europe, there were two bank failures that I know of in the last few years that required tapping into the regional FDIC equivalents. In at least one of them, quite a few depositors actually lost money (due to having savings in excess of the insured maximum).
"Purchase and Assumption Transaction. This is the preferred and most common method, under which a healthy bank assumes the insured deposits of the failed bank. Insured depositors of the failed bank immediately become depositors of the assuming bank and have access to their insured funds. The assuming bank may also purchase loans and other assets of the failed bank."
Now, that could change and we could see a recurrence of the wave of bank failures that started in 2008 and slowly tapered off, but your argument for that can't just be a hand wave at "trying times" and "fractional reserve" because the numbers currently show the opposite: https://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/bank/
Still smart to keep total accounts per type per bank under the insurance limit (currently $250,0000), and to directly verify that your accounts are actually insured using the FDIC's tool: https://closedbanks.fdic.gov/aii/
[1] https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/will-fdic-keep-protec...
But they were bailed-out by larger banks, and eventually the taxpayer. Next time, there might be bail-ins instead. [2]
[1] - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/financial...
[2] - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets-economy/090716...
Further - why do you believe that ownership is related at all to the fact that you can keep ledger entry with your wallet on it?
Ownership !== ledger entries. Ownership is a shared concept enforced by social constructs. It is not a fucking technical matter solved by a ledger.
EX: You sign a contract to send me 1 bitcoin in exchange for my car. I give you the car, but you never send me the bitcoin.
Who owns the coin? Because the ledger is going to let you spend it, but the courts are going to give me your shit. Same in reverse - I get your coin and then drive off with the car. Do I own the coin now? Because again - the ledger says yes, but our concept of ownership includes the idea of dispute and fraud - and the ledger doesn't fucking know or care.
Basically - your idea of "ownership" being limited to "my wallet, my coins" is both limited, childish, and insufficient.
However, you're also not bound by arbitrary rules by arbitrary people that may or may not hold their end of the deal. YOU own your Bitcoin, and until YOU send it to someone it's YOURS. On the other hand, money in the bank is "yours", but they can freeze your money anytime for whatever reason, or change the terms because whatever.
"It doesn't happen", sure. Until it does. And fyi "then it means you deserved it" is an excuse that reeks of first-world privilege.
Even if Bitcoin won't become the world currency, the concept of "ownership" can be useful elsewhere, especially games. Lots of games have "gems" or whatever currency the game uses. But you don't "own" these "gems", they're just a number on a database that you paid the company for. Not unlike Bitcoin, yes, but you have the added bonus of being able to exchange them freely. It's a net upgrade. The same applies to skins: you pay Epic Games for a Fortnite skin but... it's stuck there. You cannot trade it because you don't "own" it. With NFTs you do. I'd spend $10 on a skin if they gave me an NFT that I could eventually sell instead of a database entry. Out of the two options, the Postgres database is more of a scam if you think about it.
Anything that can be easily traded for currency can also act as currency so you quickly fall down the KYC rabbit hole if you want to - for example - keep children from gambling.
So the question is: is money on a blockchain any more yours in a meaningful sense that money in a bank? Sure there's a record on a ledger that you have some bitcoin, but the value of that currency can be manipulated, you can be coerced into transferring those funds to someone else, or your currency can be blacklisted[2].
With the example of games, you can be banned or the item you "own" can be banned arbitrarily as well. Nothing on blockchain prevents the game from keeping a blacklist of items that are not allowed to be used. Sure you can trade stuff (maybe), but that's already possible on e.g. Steam. IMHO, one of the biggest outcomes of that has been illegal gambling rings that use CS: GO items as a proxy for currency - which is hardly a positive development.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
[2] https://cryptoslate.com/despite-tornado-cash-fiasco-bitcoin-...
Can you functionally use them in the way you intend to?
Are they fungible currency for which you have access to goods and services (hah! they're not that even now...)
You don't get to "opt out" from society with a clever technical trick and some cryptography. For better or worse, we're in this together.
Society is not a thing you can delegate to other people. It's literally the deal we're all working with as a group. If you think the group is making bad decisions... make a compelling argument and put it in front of the group. Or Leave. Or rebel.
The ledger entry doesn't do you much good when you're bound by the covenants of the society you live in, and they think the ledger is wrong.
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The only place it may help is if you plan on intentionally breaking the covenants (ex: committing crime and fraud, such as black market deals - where I do actually believe crypto has a compelling use case [and have used it for such on the og silk road]). But now it's just a twist on the "rebel" category, and governments can and will treat it as such (see: China).
There can be clawbacks for anyone getting their money back within 90 days of bankruptcy filings. I wouldn't spend it all just yet.
(Gemini uses Genesis for their lending program, Earn.)
https://media.tenor.com/jVpPsiwNI-gAAAAd/indiana-jones-door-...